The Labor Party called a leadership ­ballot on Thursday – and Tony Abbott emerged the winner.

That is the brutal political reality at the end of a day of utter farce in Canberra in which a party that once prided itself on its ability to conduct its internal affairs whipped itself into an absurd and divisive frenzy over Julia Gillard’s leadership and then ended up where it started.

After all the hand-wringing and fear about the Labor Party’s desperate political position which has taken it to the edge of despair, all it could manage was further damage to its credibility.

The build-up to what proved to be one of the great anti-climactic moments of Australian political history has been a deepening sense that Gillard cannot win the election.

For weeks, senior figures in the party have been looking for someone to take the initiative to bring the leadership to a head. In particular, they have been putting the pressure on those who put Gillard in the leadership and have kept her there to accept that she had to go – and to take responsibility for removing her.

They refused to budge.

Those disillusioned ones then looked to Kevin Rudd to take up the responsibility and move against Gillard. He refused to do so, insisting that he would only do so in a “clear draft” – a demand by a large majority of the caucus for him to return without challenging Gillard.

Crean’s extraordinary moment

He refused to budge.

Simon Crean, once a Gillard mentor who was one of the first to promote her as future leader of the party but who has lost his faith in her, decided that, as a party elder, he should take the responsibility that the key players had declined to exercise. Crean chose an extraordinary moment to act.

As the Prime Minister went into Parliament at about 1pm on Thursday to participate in one of the best moments of bipartisanship as all sides joined together to offer a national apology to the victims of forced adoptions, Crean went to the media to declare that he had told Gillard to call a leadership spill. The parliamentary scene for the next three hours was extraordinary. But not because of the apology – that was completely overshadowed.

At the scheduled time for question time, Gillard walked into the house flanked by her most loyal supporters, led by deputy leader Wayne Swan.

Crean dramatically took a seat on the far backbench on the Labor side: it was immediately clear he had been sacked from cabinet by Gillard.

Gillard confirmed it, announcing a temporary arrangement for another minister to take over Crean’s responsibilities for regional development and the arts.

It was an announcement that confirmed Gillard was not going to go down without a fight. The question then was: would Kevin Rudd take up the invitation to fright her.

Abbott moves for vote of no confidence

But there was an important question to be answered first.

Did the government still have a majority in the Parliament or had it, because of its internal shambles, lost the support of the independents, without which it cannot govern.

For the first time since the formation of the minority government, Abbott took the grave step of moving for a vote of no confidence in Gillard. If the motion was carried, Gillard and the government would have been forced to resign and call an election.

The government refused to allow the debate. Abbott then moved to test the numbers another way: he moved to suspend standing orders to force the government to accept the motion.

In a 10-minute address, Abbott spelt out a sorry picture of the mess that he saw on the government side. Frantic conversations between senior members of the government and the independent MPs suggested they might agree with Abbott and decide to pull their support from Gillard’s Labor. An early election seemed to be a hair’s breadth away.

Gillard, given 10 minutes to make her case for her own survival, made a strange speech, lacking in passion and giving the impression she was not confident that she would save the caucus ballot.

Gillard survived parliamentary vote

In the end, when the Parliament vote was taken, three of the independents – Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Andrew Wilkie – voted with Abbott, but Peter Slipper, Adam Bandt and Craig Thomson voted with Labor. The Coalition won the vote – but it was short of the absolute majority needed to take the issue of confidence any further.

Gillard survived the parliamentary vote. But would she survive the caucus ballot? Bizarrely, that test never came.

At the last possible moment, and to the dismay of Crean and a host of others who believe the government is doomed under Gillard, Rudd announced he would not be a candidate in the leadership ballot.

There was a stunned silence among Labor MPs. But there were loud cheers from Tony Abbott and his jubilant colleagues.